


and if my heart should somehow stop

by theoneinquisitor



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 4x06 AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bellarke, Bellarke Secret Valentine Gift, aka the one where bellamy is a sap, and the confession that we deserved tbh, canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 04:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13674168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoneinquisitor/pseuds/theoneinquisitor
Summary: for my bellarke secret valentine. an alternative version of 4x06. Or: the one where bellamy decides it's time to tell Clarke how he feels.





	and if my heart should somehow stop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TracyLorde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TracyLorde/gifts).



> it's valentines day so we deserve a little fluff in our lives. to kat, i'm so glad i got to do this for you. you're wonderful and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

It takes some time for the adrenaline to wear off. Bellamy spends the entire drive to the meeting point gripping the steering wheel tightly so his hands would stop trembling. Their plan had gone to shit, per usual. It seems that they can never catch a break, that the universe is always two steps ahead of them and feels the need to make everything difficult. Not that driving hydrazine across bumpy terrain and through enemy territory even had the slightest possibility of being easy. But death was knocking on his door this time and he truly thought, for a brief moment, that they weren’t going to pull through it.

But they did. Or rather, Clarke did. She was smart and quick and once again, saves the day. All he did was make the shot. Not a big deal, really. When he reaches the rendezvous point, he jumps out of the rover to wait. It strikes him as odd that the Earth can look so calm, so peaceful, when it’s on the verge of dying. He admires the river, how clean and tranquil it is as it rocks in the wind. The air still feels and smells fresh, no indication of rising toxicity and radiation. The calm before the storm. 

When she approaches him, it doesn’t cross his mind at first. He tells her he needs to go back to camp and she reads him like the open book he is (although, his pages are only on display for her). But then she says something. She tells him how special he is and he watches something familiar cross her eyes. It’s familiar to him because it’s something that’s been clawing at him for some time. And he thinks about their last encounter, how close they both seemed to come to the end and all he can think is fuck it. 

“Clarke,” he hates how his throat seems to constrict around her name, like it’s trying to prevent him from saying it. Logically, he knows now is not the time. The world is due to burn and they have a lot more pressing matters. But he’s never been good at thinking with his head. That’s her thing, it’s part of the reason they work so well together. The head and the heart, an unstoppable combination.

She turns to him now, completely unaware of his intentions, of what he’s about to say. He thinks for a moment, that it might not be fair. That he has no right to tell her now, of all days, but then again he watched a knife get held to her throat and his own life flash before his eyes as the truck came barreling towards him. And his only thought in that moment is that she doesn’t know, or if she does know, then they both die without him saying it aloud. He’s so tired of letting things go left unsaid. It’s now or never.

He searches her eyes for a moment, they’re soft and innocent and he could honestly get lost in them at any given moment. But he manages to pull himself together and when he speaks this time, his voice is loud and clear. Determined.

“If I don’t see you again…” 

“No,” she cuts him off, “you will.”

He’s both frustrated by her stubbornness, her constant need to reassure him that everything is going to be fine, that there will always be time later for conversations that are a bit too personal. He can tell, just by the sheer urgency in which she says it, that she needs him to understand that this isn’t a goodbye. But he’s tired of being cut off, of having to put the rest of the world before himself. Of putting the world before her, something he’s done time and time again since discovering he’s had these feelings for her. 

“Clarke,” he says her name again, the frustration evident on his voice, the urgency cutting from him in a similar fashion, “I need you to hear this.”

She turns away from him briefly, and he thinks maybe she’s going to walk away from him, refusing to let him finish because maybe she knows what he’s going to say, maybe she doesn’t feel the same. Not so long ago, he would have been unsure. He would say that perhaps she loves him, but in the same way she loves Monty or Raven. In the way that you love the person you share the burden of 100 lives with. Being a leader bonded them, but it’s not what made him fall in love with her. That part was slow. It creeped up on him, a whisper in his mind the moment she sang to Atom, the day she sat with him underneath the tree after the Jobi-nut fiasco and told him he’s not the monster he sees himself to be. The whispers grew louder when he saw her in Camp Jaha, sprinting towards him and wrapping her arms around him like he might just fall into the Earth and disappear if she let go. When she became his rock, his go to person before even his sister whom he thought would always be number one. He wasn’t sure when he realized that his feelings were more, that they ascended the plane of leadership and platonic friendship. Perhaps when she left after Mount Weather and he felt a strange emptiness in him that wasn’t filled until the day she came back. Even then, his anger was hot and the wounds fresh, he couldn’t admit that that is why it hurt him the way it did. But he knows that he’s been in love with her for some time now, and he can’t possibly part ways with her without fucking telling her. No more putting it off because tomorrow really isn’t a guarantee.

“I need you to know how special you are, too,” he starts, using her own words in the hopes that she really understands that this is more than a last minute confession, “To me. You are special to me. And it’s in a way that is so different from everyone else. You are the one person that understands who I am, who accepts that and never tries to make me feel like I should be any different.”

“Bellamy...” she tries to interrupt again, but he fixes his gaze on her, every wall he’s ever created broken down and suddenly he’s transparent. He can see her mind turning, the pieces falling into place and her jaw snaps shut, lips turned slightly upward as she nods for him to continue. 

“If I’m on that list, you’re on that list,” he repeats, because that moment is the closest thing to a confession they’ve ever come, a blatant statement that put all their cards on the table. Without her, there is no him and vice versa.

“I wish I could make some grand gesture or that we had time to do things the right way,” he tries to give her a small smile as he thinks about another life, where he could ask her on a date and they could find some sort of normalcy. Where they didn’t have to worry about grounders or mountain men or the end of the world. Where they could just fucking be.

“But I’ll be damned if I let you walk away right now and not hear me say it,” he finishes pointedly and while it seems a bit forward, he’s beyond caring at this point, he slides his calloused hand onto her cheek, stroking along her cheek bone with his thumb. She doesn’t pull back, instead she leans into it and closes her eyes, embracing the moment for what it is and he knows that she feels it too. He’s not sure she’ll ever be able to say it, at least not anytime soon, but he knows it’s there.

“I love you, Clarke Griffin.” and he could leave it there, but he wants her to understand that he doesn’t just love the best parts of her, “ I’m in love with you. Every version of you, even the ones I don’t like sometimes or the ones you hate. All of you.”

He feels something wet hit the corner of his thumb and he notices then that she’s crying and he thinks maybe he fucked up. Maybe he overstepped his boundaries but then she looks at him and reaches up to hold her hand to his own, squeezing his fingers gently. 

“I’m scared,” she whispers and it shocks him for a moment. He hadn’t really been prepared for that and had definitely not intended to scare her. But he can’t blame her. In fact, as he thinks about it, he’s scared, too. Scared that no matter what they do there will always be another obstacle. Scared to feel this way about someone else, to wonder what would happen if she were suddenly not here anymore. He thinks maybe his soul would split or the world would lose all its color. How could he let himself get this attached? But that’s the thing -- it was unintentional. It wasn’t planned. Sometimes love just happens, it finds you and latches onto you no matter how hard you try to fight it.   
“Me too,” he answers back, pushing a stray curl behind her ear. She laughs softly, shaking her head as tries to figure out how best to say what she needs to. 

“I don’t know how to separate I love you from goodbye,” she admits. He’s taken aback by her vulnerability, how small she sounds as she says it. It hits him then that she doesn’t understand it to mean much more. She told Finn right before he died, before she shoved a knife into his heart. She told Lexa, as Lexa lay before her bleeding out. All she sees is a pattern, a pattern of bodies littered at her feet. His conclusion must be evident because before he can move, she slides both hands onto either side of his face and forces him to look at her, “And the thought of losing you too makes me feel like I’m suffocating.”

It all feels silly, to be standing here baring their souls to one another as the hydrazine still needs to be delivered and the clock for doomsday continue to tick.They should carry on with their duty, resume this conversation when they don’t have other matters to worry about. But again, Bellamy has never been great with his head. So he leans down and it seems she, too, is allowing her heart to take the lead, as she leans up to meet him. 

Kissing her is ethereal, a word he’s never thought to use to explain anything in his life. But it’s like something fills him, makes him whole, and the ground no longer feels like it’s going to swallow him whole. In fact, it feel a lot like floating. They don’t take the time to explore each other, that’s something that he wants to take his time with, but the kiss is soft and promising and only further confirmation that they are so much more in this world than leaders. Than friends. 

When they pull apart, he smiles at her, the first true smile he thinks he’s had in weeks. And she laughs, full and rich and warm. And for a brief moment, the world doesn’t feel like it’s ending. 

It feels like it’s beginning.


End file.
